


Everything to Lose

by theheadandthekin



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 09:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5201390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheadandthekin/pseuds/theheadandthekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things have changed between Abbie and Crane since they first met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything to Lose

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot. Originally posted to Tumblr.

They used to be reckless. Reckless in their mission, reckless with their lives–reckless to the brink of suicide.

In some sense, the day Sheriff Corbin had died, the day Crane woke in the present, the day the end of days began, they _had_ lost both of their lives.

They were the dead, walking.

And it _made_ them reckless. It made them reckless with one another. In word and in deed.

They were no longer reckless. She’d followed his wife into the past, without thinking, without considering the utter _danger_ of it, to save _him_ ; he’d stabbed his wife in the present, without second-guessing his choice, to save _her_. It didn’t matter whether any of it was _on purpose_. It mattered only that it was _unthinking._ Unconsidered.

And there, in those moments, the only thing they’d had to lose then was one another. It terrified them both; it pulled them up short, demanded a distance.

So they made lives. Made choices. Left Sleepy Hollow. Separated. 

They built things that could no longer be sacrificed recklessly. For duty. Or for one another.

When they both returned to Sleepy Hollow, and finally to work together, to live together, they were deliberate, not reckless. Everything was carefully planned, considered, thought-through, from the take-down of a particular demon, to the words they said to one another over coffee in the morning. 

There was no space for error. Because there were tomorrows, they were days _after._ There were real dreams, desires, possibilities. There was life now. More life than death.

So they were careful. They no longer spoke what they were thinking, no longer let words spill out, raw and untended. They no longer looked too long at one another. They rarely hugged, rarely touched. They were quieter, too.

What had before seemed, _been_ , unbreakable was the most fragile thing they’d ever held.

Restraint was painful. She had wanted to cry and yell at him for getting himself stabbed and nearly killed; he wanted to plead with her to stop pushing him away and let herself open up for him.

But they didn’t. Because they knew, if they were reckless, it would shatter in their hands.


End file.
